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TO THOMAS HOOKHAM, ESQ. 83
which Wordsworth is the most exact specimen,
and which seems to have arisen from
the startling influence of the causes which
preceded the events which
signalised the
French Revolution. From this influence
Lord Byron was long preserved by [the] circumstance
of his high birth, and the companionship
of ordinary men.
Thus we have
seen in his writings, as the Christians would
say, pride, vain-glory, and hypocrisy, malice,
revenge, &c. But that he is a person of
consummate genius, and that he has composed
a poem in the very highest style of
poetry, I, the slowest of all men to praise,
now not only allow, but assert. It is the
privUege and the power of genius to break
through the mere accidents of situation, and
to vindicate its own pre-eminence by belonging
to no class, and submitting, however
late, to no control.
This poem, of which I
speak, merits so much praise as belongs to